The Assassination of John Lennon

The scene outside New York's spooky old Dakota apartment building on the evening of December 8, 1980, was as surreal as it was horrifying. John Lennon, probably the world's most famous rock star, lay semiconscious, hemorrhaging from four flat-tipped bullets blasted into his back. His wife Yoko O-No held his head in her arms and screamed.

A few yards away a pudgy young man stood eerily still, peering down into a paperback book. Moments earlier he had dropped into a military firing stance - legs spread for maximum balance, two hands gripping his .38 revolver to steady his aim - and blown away the very best Beatle. Now he leafed lazily through the pages of the one novel even the most chronically stoned and voided-out ninth grader will actually read, J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye.

The Dakota doorman shouted at the shooter, Mark David Chapman, "Do you know what you've done?""I just shot John Lennon," Chapman replied, accurately enough.

It was a tragedy of Kerkegaardian pointlessness. There was only one apparent way to squeeze any sense from it; write it off as random violence by a "wacko."

"He walked past me and then I heard in my head, 'Do it, do it, do it,' over and over again, saying 'Do it, do it, do it,' like that," Chapman, preternaturally serene, recalled in a BBC documentary several years after going to prison. "I don't remember aiming. I must have done, but I don't remember drawing a bead or whatever you call it. And I just pulled the trigger steady five times."

Chapman described his feeling at the time of the shooting as "no emotion, no anger…dead silence in the brain."

His unnatural tone sounded all-too-familiar. British lawyer/journalist Fenton Bresler took it as a tip-off. Chapman was a brainwashed hit man carrying out someone else's contract.

"Mark David Chapman," writes Bresler, "is in many ways as much the victim of those who wanted to kill John Lennon as Lennon himself."

Prosecutors, as a loss for motive, opted for the cliché: Chapman did it for the attention- the troublesome American preoccupation with grabbing that elusive fifteen minutes of propels many a daily-newspaper-journalist-cum-pop-sociologist into raptures of sanctimony. But Arthur O'Connor, the detective who spent more time with Chapman immediately following the murder than anyone else, saw it another way.

"It is definitely illogical to say that Mark Committed the murder to make himself famous. He did not want to talk to the press from the very start….It's possible Mark could have been used by somebody. I saw him the night of the murder. I studied him intensely. He looked as if he could have been programmed."

O'Connor was speaking to Bresler, and publicly for the first time. Bresler's book Who Killed John Lennon? Offers the most cogent argument that Lennon's murder was not the work of yet another "lone nut."

Conspiracy theories abounded after the Lennon assassination, many rather cruelly fingering Yoko as the mastermind. Another focused on Paul who, by this line of reasoning, blamed Yoko for engineering his arrest in Japan on reefer charges. The Lennon conspiracy turns up on radio talk shows with some frequency, where hosts fend off callers with the "Why bother to kill that guy?" defense.

Only Bresler's thesis, that Chapman was a mind-controlled assassin manipulated by some right-wing element possibly connected to the newly elected (and not even inaugurated) Reagan apparatus of reaction, transcends the confines of pure speculation, extending into the realm of actual investigation.

Even so, Bresler's book a little too often substitutes rhetorical questions ("What does that steady repetition of a voice saying 'Do it, do it, do it,' over and over again in Mark's head sound like to you?") for evidentiary argument. We can forgive him for that failing. Bresler tracked the case for eight years, conducted unprecedented interviews, and extracted a ream of previously unreleased government documents. But unlike researchers into the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, he did not have volumes of evidence gathered by any official investigation, even a flawed one, to fall back on. The New York police had their man, the case was closed the very night of the murder - and, anyway, what political reason could possibly exist for gunning down the composer of "I Am the Walrus"?

In building his case, Bresler established some key points that put the lie to any "Who would want to kill an aging rock star?" brush-off.

Richard Nixon, his administration and other right-wing politicians (including ultraconservative ancient Senator Strom Thurmond, who personally memoed Attorney Gerneral John Mitcell on the matter) were fixated on what they saw as the Lennon problem. To them, the politically outspoken singer-songwriter was an insidious subversive of the worst kind, the famous and beloved kind.

J. Edgar Hoover shared their concerns. One page of Lennon's FBI file bears the handwritten, block- lettered, under lined words, ALL EXTREMISTS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED DANGEROUS.

The government went all-out to deny Lennon his longed-for permanent U.S. residency, and more than that, to deport him altogether (that was the subject of Thurmond's memo).

Lennon's FBI file - at nearly three hundred pages as chubby as Hoover himself - reveals that he was under "constant surveillance." Nor did the G-men keep a particularly low profile around the ex- Beatle, apparently attempting to harass him into silence or at least drive him nuts, similar to the tactic they had used on Martin Luther King, Jr., a few short but eventful years earlier.

In late 1972, when the "surveillance" was at its peak, Lennon told humorist Paul Krassner, "Listen, if anything happens to Yoko and me, it was not an accident."

The FBI and the CIA tracked Lennon at least from his "Free John Sinclair" concert in 1969 until 1976 - even though by then Lennon had won his immigration battle and dropped out of not only political activism but public life altogether into what turned out to be a five-year period of seclusion. His apartment was watched, he was followed, his phone was tapped.

Placing a person under "constant surveillance" and ordering that person executed are admittedly two different things. Nevertheless, Bresler's point is that the government did not consider John Lennon a harmless rock 'n' roller whose awkward entrance into the world of political activism often carried a high cringe factor (as in his Montreal "bed-in").

He was viewed as a dangerous radical who needed to be stopped.

And in a way that official paranoia might have been justified, because as embarrassing as Lennon and Ono's political publicity stunts occasionally became, John Lennon was always capable of seizing the spotlight and speaking directly to millions of young people who venerated him.

With unfettered access to the media, his power was immense, at least potentially so, and recognized by more experienced radicals like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, who linked themselves to Lennon, clinging to close that they made the rock star uncomfortable.

Lennon was killed just four years after the intense FBI/CIA surveillance ceased. In those intermittent years, Jimmy Carter was president - a Democrat who kept the two gestapo-ish agencies more or less in check.

But in December 1980, when John Lennon's first album in half a decade was high on the charts, Carter was a lame duck chief executive, having lost his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan. Reagan's campaign was managed by career secret agent William Casey, who under President Reagan became the CIA's most freewheeling chief since Allen Dulles. The new far-right administration would reassemble the intelligence services and grant them a cheerful carte blanche.

The forces that tried desperately to neutralize Lennon for at least seven years lost power in 1976. Lennon's government dossier ends in that year. In 1980, as those forces were preparing to retake control of the government, "dangerous extremist" John Lennon emerged from retirement. Within a few months he was murdered.

The paper trail that might support the conspiracy theory is a little thin, however. It doesn't extend much beyond the airline ticket found in Chapman's hotel room; a Hawaii-New York connection departing December 5. But Chapman had actually purchased a Hawaii-Chicago ticket to depart December 2, with no connecting flight. The ticket found after his arrest had apparently been altered. None of his friends knew that he traveled on to New York. They thought he went to Chicago for a three-day stay.

Bresler concludes that the Lennon assassination, which, as Chapman himself noted in a rare interview, "ended an era," bears similarities to another assassination that took place twelve years earlier: the murder of Robert F. Kennedy.

RFK's apparent lone killer, Sirhan Sirhan, and Chapman (coincidentally?) shared a defense psychiatrist. But while Dr. Bernard Diamond couldn't skirt the obvious fact that Sirhan was under hypnosis (Diamond wrote it off as self-hypnosis), he labeled Chapman a "paranoid schizophrenic."

The court disagreed. Chapman even now has never had more than routine psychiatric care since entering his guilty plea. He was not sent to a mental hospital, but to Attica State Prison. He was judged legally "rational."

Bresler clears up a few widely disseminated misconceptions about Mark David Chapman:

While any mention of his name is now accompanied by the phrase "deranged fan," Chapman was anything but. He was no more or less ardent a Beatles/Lennon fan than anyone of his generation. His real rock hero was Todd Rundgren, a cynical studio craftsman who could not be further from Lennon in artistic sensibility.

Notwithstanding Chapman's announcement months after the murder that he "killed Lennon to gain prominence to promote the reading of The Catcher in the Rye," Chapman never exhibited strong feelings about the novel until shortly before the shooting. (Catcher, Bresler muses, may have been used as a device to trigger Chapman's "programming.")

After the murder, major media ran bizarre stories of Chapman's supposed growing identification with John Lennon - at one point he even "re-baptized" himself as Lennon, according to Newsweek. These stories were all quite fascinating, but there was no evidence to back any of them up. (It is true that when Chapman quit his last job he signed out as "John Lennon," then crossed the name out, but Bresler interprets this, reasonably, as Chapman saying, "John Lennon, I am going to kill you," rather than "John Lennon, I am you."

Chapman was not a "longer." He was for most of his life a normally social individual and a camp counselor who had a special rapport with kids.

Bresler also notes that when Chapman signed up for a YMCA overseas program, he selected an odd destination: Beirut - a perfect place, says Bresler, for Chapman, a once gentle soul, to be "blooded," that is, desensitized to violence.

A final note to the mystery of Mark David Chapman: As he was ready to go to trial and his diligent public defender was winding up six months spent assembling Chapman's defense, the accused killer suddenly decided to change his plea to guilty. His lawyer was perplexed and more than a little perturbed. But Chapman was determined. He said he was acting on instructions from a "small male voice" that spoke to him in his cell.

The documentary which in Spain is title us against John Lennon on the Decade (1966-1976) which marked the more anti-war stage of the former Beatle, say touched in the Festival film of Venice, where he was received with warm applause and some tears.

Impeccable and very well mounted work which condemned the harassment to which the American Government submitted to the charismatic musician, when moved to United States, embracing the pacifist cause and the defence of civil rights. The film, whose soundtrack consists, how could it be otherwise, songs of Lennon, some of which are previously unreleased, complaint that the administration of President Richard Nixon monitored the musician intervened their telephone lines and attempted to deport him under the argument that the British genius was being unfair with us. "We wanted to show what happens when a great artist has the courage to challenge to power, when a man without fear struggle for peace", explained David Leaf, one of its directors. "The film is not intended to comment on the current situation, but the comparison is inevitable". Leaf recalled the case of the female music group country, The Dixie Chicks, boycotted in numerous us radio since one of its Members criticized George w. Bush. "After the September 11 attacks, any slight disagreement with the Government is considered antipatriótico." "That's exactly what happened to Lennon," explained the director The public will encounter a Yoko Ono never seen before in public." I believe that the time to speak at the time had come for her. "And, given the tragic events of the past five years, considered it necessary to make this film," noted Leaf, which emphasized the fact that John and Yoko were the most famous couple of the moment. "Used his fame to try to build a better world." That makes only what they did. "They were very brave".I welcome much that Premiere and excitement that despertara in Venetian première since, although the complaint is made quite late, we sing what better late that never It is not vain presumption, please (that one even if you do not have grandmother knows of modesty and recato), healthy joy at match approaches this couple of filmmakers who have had the fortune, courage, and the value collect both original and unpublished, material to yell to the world (though not shown irrefutable way) that the US Government killed John Lennon more film as: using through the FBI to a poor psychopath that would descerrajar a charger pistol against the author of imagine. The Mark Chapman was not otherwise: executing hand American Executive. Or perhaps at this stage someone sane doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of John f. Kennedy, was a gunman paid by the Federal Bureau of Investigation? The Almighty FBI has made public a secret reports that reveals that the former Beatle John Lennon supported since 1972 to Irish Republic Army, known as IRA, sending economic contributions to persons and civilian organizations close to the Northern Ireland liberation movement."

Without going to assess the reliability of the information (should not be forgotten that the same agency kept hidden reports related to that same Department to John Kennedy's assassination), the question immediately arises is why come to light these allegations the year commemorating the 20th anniversary of the assassination of the Beatle, and while the talks in the Northern Ireland peace process through a disturbing impasse.

Perhaps wants the FBI Lennon image is distorted to history and their fans that Idol move from hero to villain? What who or who are interested in putting in cloaca terrorist suspect the creator of topics such as Working Class hero, Revolution, Woman is the Nigger of the World, etc.? Such time to darken the possible concerts and celebrations of 8 December 2000, in which a never investigated Mark Chapman download five bullet wounds in the body of John? Lennon's murder theories ever deserved in-depth research. Even his widow, Yoko Ono, wanted to spend or a single dollar work he knew in advance would be torpedeada from unattainable instances for her. It would wait to Oliver Stone gain permission to open the Pandora box hidden in all offices of the FBI, and began filming JWL (John Winston Lennon) would be shown, where as in JFK, the assassination of Dallas was not work of an American procastrista. Since very young, both John and the brand-new today Sir Paul Mac Cartney, not hid his sympathies for the territory of Northern Ireland liberation movements (explicitly shown in topics as Get Back Ireland to the Irish or Sunday, Bloody Sunday), but hence there is a huge gap, as large as intended to put an end once the legend of John Lennon to assert that they financed the IRA actions paficista unfettered, dreamlike and idealistic.

Perhaps the FBI not convenient recall that in 1916 the British Government sentenced to death to Éamon de Valera, later Prime Minister of Ireland until 1959 and President the same year, or actors like John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara or directors as John Ford (all of Irish descent), openly sympathized with the Republican cause bringing thousands of dollars to their purposes. But, of course, the protagonists of the film the man scenic should not be investigated. (End of the article) John was an unfair character in the USA Government blacklists. Today, having survived, would be the of dangerous "terrorist". Because defending peace, because supported the workers, because fought against injustice, because denouncing the atrocities in Vietnam, because realized the struggle of Northern Ireland for total independence, because shouted you to the world that are still missing many revolutions Why I say that in this state of affairs, John Lennon was a terrorist. And I also. To much honour

USA: And if Israel would never be founded? By: William Hughes * release date: 25/09/07"Imagine that countries no..."Nothing why live or die..."Imagine all persons living in peace."

John Lennon

Thanks largely to President Harry S. Truman usamericano and its "susceptibility to the Zionist influence", Israel began to exist in 1948. (1) The invoice that decision has been high for humanity, particularly for Palestinians. The land the Palestinians had been inhabited for centuries and in peace with a Jewish minority population has gradually become a State of apartheid with the machinations of the Zionist movement. In turn, that the apartheid State is dominated by the Israeli machine of death, mutilation and occupation.One wonders how the world would be today if one had not created the State of Israel in 1948. Its founding, lacking in foresight, seems to have unleashed a series of events, negative, most for humanity. In the film "Click" lose control (click), the protagonist is a "universal remote control" that allows you to back to different parts of his life and change the facts. If I had a "universal remote control" like that and could prevent President Truman help and instigara the foundation of an Israeli State, especulo (teorizo) that the following 25 proposed probably would be part of our current reality:

1 USA wouldn't any enemy in the Islamic world.

2 Wouldn't one of Al - Qaeda terrorist network.

3. The price of gasoline would be less than a dollar per gallon.

4 Not occurred on September 11 usamericano.

5. There would be Patriotic Act in the USA.

6 Wouldn't the Security Agency of the Usamericano national territory (Homeland Security Agency).7 Would never "power unparalleled" who has exercised the Israel lobby usamericana foreign policy more than 40 years. (Experts to support the war in Iraq has been "crucial"). (3) 8. Nor would have been neoconservative, ideologists such as Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Richard Perle, etc, which contribute to launch (with other "special interests") to the USA to an illegal war against Iraq. (4) 9. Iran would not be the next target of aggression usamericana. (There is no Israel). There is "A clean break" document. There is the Israel lobby. There is the neoconservardores. (There is no need of USA of attacking Iran). (5)

10 Jonathan Pollard, the Zionist mequetrefe, would not be in prison for stealing secret military usamericanos and have been sold to Israel.

11. The more than three million Palestinians forced to leave their homeland since 1948 by the forces of Israeli occupation (IOF) lived there, happy in a free and independent State called Palestine. Wouldn't an apartheid wall nor, as a corollary, an organization called Hamas. (6) 12. Jerusalem would have an effervescent Christian population. (7)

13 Rachel Corrie, Olympia, Washington would be alive and well. (8)14. The 2,544 usamericanos who have died in Iraq would be living and 18,777 who have been severely wounded beyond would be productive in our Republic. Contributing usamericanos would receive 295,000 million dollars (the cost of the war) in the purse for the social needs of people. Universal health care could be a real possibility and social security would not be endangered. Iraq would be in peace. Wouldn't the field of detention of Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib prison; there would be a reason for the Bush-Cheney Gang gang destazara the figure of Habeas Corpus. Nor should the gang resorted to torturers and chemical weapons, nor retained the detainees without criminal charges or trial. Respecting the Geneva Convention. The tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have died during the war would be living. (The following note found some dreadful pictures of dead Iraqis). (9)

15. The number one priority would be the battle to save the planet, its fragile ecosystem and its diminishing wildlife, and the battle to combat global warming. (10) Away from this, all times are us bombs with propaganda about the importance of defining "the security of Israel".

16 If Israel did not exist, no one reportedly arrested on 9 September 2001 "danzarines five Israelis". Grabbed them from "hold" in New Jersey while saw the twin towers collapse. (11)

17 Contributing usamericanos would pockets $ 140,000 million more than now. That is the appalling sum that have apoquinado in the past 58 years for support prey interests Zionist poster. (3)18. The 34 usamericanos aboard the USS Liberty, massacred by the IOF on 8 June 1967 would be alive; the other 174 that wounded shouldn't having endured terrible experiences. You would have avoided shame drag USA by having not quickly defended liberty's men and taken reprisals against Israelis by deliberately attack his ship. (12)

19. On 13 June 2006, the IOF killed ten Palestinian, including three medical and two children in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, rated this example of "State terrorism" missile strike. Only God knows exactly how many Palestinians and Israelis have been killed since 1948 or how many refugees has created the existence of Israel, or how many homes, the pure style of Oliver Cromwell, have demolished the IOF. None of this would have been possible without the dubious "State of Israel". (13)

20 Paul Bremer, Henry raised "Iago" Kissinger, would have never been appointed viceroy of occupied Iraq. There is no Israel. There is the war against Iraq. There is a surname Bremer Zionist acting as viceroy of Iraq. (14)

21. One of the reasons why the Warren Commission failed to properly investigate the assassination of John f. Kennedy was Arlen Specter (R-PA), a declared Zionist. At that time was "Special Advisor" of the Commission. He invented the absurd "magic bullet" that threw overland any attempt to thoroughly investigate a possible conspiracy theory. It is also interesting to note that Jacob Rubenstein, also known as "Jack Ruby", the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald, had close links with the Mafia organization Meyer Lansky nationwide. I believe that the truth about who really planned the assassination of John f. Kennedy died with Oswald. In any case, after the death of Kennedy, adopted the programme of Israel that he opposed nuclear weapons. US aid to Israel also multiplied dramatically. (15)22. No French Ambassador would have need to refer to Israel as "that shit country". (16) In fact, the Jews of the world would have been released to go towards its deepest spiritual search according to their own religion, Judaism. According to the highly respected Orthodox Rabbi Dovid Yisroel Weiss, "Zionism kidnapped Judaism". This courageous Rabbi insists that "Zionism generates anti-Semitism... and know... that Zionism is the main cause of the pain, suffering and bloodshed of the Jewish people... and they (Zionists) are the largest manufacturer of anti-Semitism worldwide... Judaism and Zionism are not the same thing." They are diametrically opposed... we must not confuse them. Nor do we have to be responsible for the actions of the Zionists... now well, indeed problems of the Zionist movement is the fact that his followers curtailed the rights of the Palestinian people, the people of this place. This is very, very bad. "Runs counter to all the concepts contained in the Torah... and so, by where you want to see you, all you do is wrong". (17)

23. Thousands of Israelis have been killed in the attempt to build a nation in a land, Palestine, which belonged to other people, Palestinians. Their deaths could have avoided. (18)

24 Widespread espionage of usamericanos without a warrant at the hands of the Bush-Cheney gang operational would have never given. (There is no Israel). There are 11 September usamericano. (There espionage against citizens usamericanos).25. On 4 April 2003, an opinion poll in the European Union (EU) identified Israel as "the greatest threat to world peace". (19) On June 27, 2006 the IOF gave reason to Gaza, recoupar EU savagely terrorize civilians, flew their electrical installations and water supply, organize the mass arrest of their elected officials, and also, without any justification, cause the Syrians. The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, reaction to the repeated bombardment of the FOI in Gaza, was funny phrase "! the discomfort not kill anyone!" To address a joint session of Congress usamericano on 24 May 2006, Olmert was interrupted by applause 38 times and that group basically formed corporate dogs gave 18 foot cheer. It's the same Israeli leader, paraphrasing the "rebellion on the farm" of George Orwell, stating "deeply regret" the effects of some of the operations of the IOF killed 14 Palestinians innocent in only nine days, but the lives of Israeli citizens were "even more important". (20) Finally, the absence of the State of Israel, founded by Zionists, nor would need to write a text like this.

Ahhh... now this one touched me deeply and truly broke my heart. I loved the Beatles but especially John. I remember sitting in my college dorm room doing homework and having the NFL's Monday Night Football on tv as sportscaster Howard Cosell interrupted the game with the news. I was dumbstruck and lost for words. I immediately broke down and started crying. Not a Beatle. Certainly NOT John. Rumors surfaced for many years. Most were ignored by me due to the utter disbelief that John had been sacrificed based on an assumption.

The guy supposedly shot back then wasnt LENNON, sorry to shatter ur dreams. U also need to take a good look here. This is how they work, guys. Cloning and replacement imposters arent a joke. Just consider MJ's case...